the art of writing

Readers don’t have short attention spans—they have short enchantment spans . There’s an infinite amount of content out there, and readers know it. The introduction convinces a reader that their finite time alive is best spent reading this piece in front of them , and not all the other things on the internet.

In my experience, there is no such thing as “clerical work” in writing: the donkey work is crucial to the process, as is having to sort through the mess of the draft — that’s the art of self-editing, and it’s the art of finding what you didn’t know you were looking for

'In my experience,' he told me, 'if you run away from a thing just because you don't like it, you don't like what you find either. Now, running to a thing, that's a different matter,

There’s a quote I like from Theodor Adorno, who said, “for a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes place to live." While I’ve never been a refugee, I still feel that quote really strongly, as someone who’s never quite felt fully at home in most of my ordinary life– always a bit of an alien, always an outsider, always a minority, always ... See more

Because right now there is someone

Out there with

a wound in the exact shape

of your words.

I think of writing a lot like walking. It’s rarely the most popular, the most effective, or the most efficient way of getting to your destination. I don’t always want to do it, and it’s not always technically enjoyable; sometimes it’s boring or slow, sometimes it’s tiring and pointless, sometimes it’s cold or wet or windy and I’m retracing the same... See more